Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to scheduling, and more particularly to techniques for generating schedules to manage production processes within a manufacturing environment, using block-based workflows.
Description of the Related Art
Manufacturing facilities across many different industries are responsible for producing products that are used in every facet of life. In the case of semiconductor manufacturing, for example, semiconductor manufacturing facilities manufacture products such as, microprocessors, memory chips, microcontrollers, and other semiconductor devices that have a ubiquitous presence in everyday life. These semiconductor devices are used in a wide variety of applications, examples of which include automobiles, computers, home appliances, cellular phones, and many others. Further, in recent years, both the number of applications and demand for devices (including semiconductor devices) has steadily increased. This increased demand has led manufacturing facilities to become increasingly conscious of increasing product variety and reducing delivery times.
Each manufacturing environment is unique and extremely complex, often requiring immense amounts of capital for the necessary equipment, tools, facilities, etc. Because manufacturing is so capital intensive, even small increases in factory performance (e.g., such as building to demand, shortening order to delivery time, etc.) can have large effects on financial performance (e.g., by reducing cost through leaner manufacturing, freeing up capital tied to idle inventory, etc.). For this reason, many manufacturing facilities have recently become interested in implementing scheduling systems in their facilities to manage the complexity, provide high-quality, on-time deliveries, etc.
Today, manufacturing facilities generally build and implement custom-built scheduling systems or purchase commercial scheduling systems to schedule all or part of the equipment in their facility. Custom built scheduling systems, however, are difficult to maintain and inflexible, which makes it difficult to make modifications to the scheduling system. In many cases, for example, the manufacturing facility may undergo changes to account for new applications, tool improvements, etc. With custom-built scheduling systems, however, adapting to such changes can require a level of technical expertise that may not be available to the manufacturing facility (e.g., an end user may not have coding experience, etc.), require a significant time commitment, substantial costs (e.g., due to the complexity of the facility), etc. Further, commercial scheduling systems are generally closed, black-box solutions that do not allow customization by an end user. In these cases, modifying the scheduling system is simply not possible without paying the commercial vendor (e.g., to modify the commercial scheduling system, design a new commercial scheduling system, etc.), which can be very cost-prohibitive and time-consuming. In addition, traditional scheduling systems (e.g., custom-built scheduling systems, commercial scheduling systems, etc.) generally are not capable of evaluating the quality of a generated schedule and/or troubleshooting the system in the case of a problem. As a result, identifying potential problems in a particular schedule and/or modifying the schedule can require immense amounts of time, other expensive solutions, etc., all of which can impact the manufacturing facility's ability to meet the increasing demand for products.